BMJ Savages Big Pharma

In startling further evidence of the empowerment provided by this Foundation’s information campaigns, the British Medical Journal has launched an all-out attack on big pharma and the medical establishment. Copies of all the relevant articles can be accessed using the links below:

• Characteristics of general practitioners who frequently see
  drug industry representatives: national cross sectional study
  Variation in prescribing costs between general practitioners is well documented. We previously found that frequent general practitioner contact with drug industry representatives was strongly and independently associated with higher prescribing costs. This paper describes the attitudes and behaviour of general practitioners who report seeing drug representatives frequently.
  Read article at BMJ.com
   
• Who pays for the pizza? Redefining the relationships between doctors and drug companies.
  In this two part article, a journalist based in Washington DC explores the brewing conflicts at one of the world's leading medical campuses as it joins the wider global debate about how to redefine relations with big pharmaceutical companies.
  1: Entanglement
  Read article at BMJ.com
  2: Disentanglement
  Read article at BMJ.com
    
• No more free lunches
  Patients will benefit from doctors and drug companies disentangling
  Read article at BMJ.com
   
• Information from drug companies and opinion leaders
  Double standards in information for medical journals and practitioners should go
  Read article at BMJ.com
   
• Pharmaceutical industry sponsorship and research outcome and quality: systematic review
  Clinical research sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry affects how doctors practise medicine. An increasing number of clinical trials at all stages in a product's life cycle are funded by the pharmaceutical industry, probably reflecting the fact that the pharmaceutical industry now spends more on medical research than do the National Institutes of Health in the United States. Most pharmacoeconomic studies are either done in-house by the drug companies or externally by consultants who are paid for by the company.
  Read article at BMJ.com
   
• Drug company secretly briefed medical societies on HRT
  Pharmaceutical giant Wyeth has admitted that it secretly briefed a number of medical societies about the results of a study into hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and dementia before they were published this week.
  Read article at BMJ.com
   
• Drug company sponsorship of education could be replaced at a fraction of its cost
  The head of the main medical education accrediting body in the United States says that many commercially sponsored educational events could be run at a fraction of their cost, without unnecessary extras such as expensive lunches and entertainment.
  Read article at BMJ.com
   
• World Medical Association reviews doctors’ links with drug companies
  No individual doctors should receive direct payment from commercial companies to cover travelling expenses, room and board at a conference, or compensation for their time, according to proposed guidelines from the World Medical Association.
  Read article at BMJ.com
   
• How to dance with porcupines: rules and guidelines on doctors' relations with drug companies
  Interactions between doctors and drug companies can lead to ethical dilemmas. This article gives an overview of the guidance and codes of practice that aim to regulate the relationship.
  Read article at BMJ.com
   
• How can research ethics committees protect patients better?
  The duties of research ethics committees are becoming increasingly difficult—what skills and knowledge do their members need to evaluate protocols that contain elements that are not in the patient's interests?
  Read article at BMJ.com
   
• Medical journals and pharmaceutical companies: uneasy bedfellows
  Many medical journals have a substantial income from pharmaceutical companies from the purchasing of advertising and reprints and the sponsoring of supplements. Is this funding corrupting journals?
  Read article at BMJ.com
   
• Unhealthy spin
  Public relations companies are experts at "third party technique"—helping the drug industry separate the message from what could be seen as a self interested messenger. But most journalists have a sketchy idea about how the public relations industry works, and thereby are vulnerable to uncritically accepting the disguised messages of the drug industry
  Read article at BMJ.com